A host of quack nostrums are offered to a credulous public under the claim that they reduce corpulency. Some of them have achieved reputation because while they are taken the patient is also induced to regulate his diet; others merely because they have destroyed the appetite or digestion and have made it impossible to eat too much food. But the whole lot of " reduction pills," concentrated salts and purges, extracts of phytolacca berries, Fucus vesiculosus, and other so-called "specifics " for reduction of obesity, cannot be too strongly condemned as thoroughly unscientific, if not positively harmful or dangerous, as many of them are.

It cannot be expected that any chemical remedy can control the complex processes involved, and the substances which are in extensive use by credulous persons for this purpose diminish the appetite, impair the digestion, and seriously interfere with nutrition.

Excepting the thyroid extract there is no drug or remedy known which acts specifically either in retarding fat formation or in causing its destruction in the body, and when any such remedy appears to have that effect, it is acting indirectly by a general lowering of vitality.